GoDaddy has agreed to acquire Poynt, which lets businesses sell and accept payments anywhere through its suite of products, according to a press release.
GoDaddy plans to pay $320 million in cash at closing, along with $45 million in deferred cash payments subject to various performance and employment standards in the next three years, the release stated. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2021.
GoDaddy was interested in Poynt because of the digital shift in payments due to the pandemic, as well as in-person and online shopping converging more all the time, the release stated.
Poynt is used by over 100,000 merchants and has over $16 billion in annual gross merchandising volume (GMV), according to the release. The software from Poynt includes terminals, mobile or web software and help for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to integrate with various payment processors.
Poynt, the release stated, will be integrated with GoDaddy's Websites and Marketing as well as its WordPress commerce services, letting SMBs use it to connect commerce experiences across various channels.
"Commerce is critical to our customers, and we continue to invest in building seamlessly intuitive experiences that enable small businesses to sell everywhere," said GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani. "Poynt accelerates our strategy to provide a complete suite of commerce and payment services to address this critical customer need and focus on a large addressable market opportunity. We've built leading eCommerce capabilities that today allow small businesses to easily sell on their sites, across major marketplaces and the most popular social networks, and now we will help make them successful everywhere."
Greg Goldfarb, vice president Products: eCommerce, Mobile & Consumer Engagement with GoDaddy, told PYMNTS last year that the eCommerce boom had raised the question of how to go about selling one's goods either on a marketplace or making one's own site. He said a business could do both, and that they didn't have to be competitors.
Goldfarb brought up GoDaddy's acquisition of Sellbrite, whose technology helped to plug businesses into digital markets or social media, as an example of helping SMBs get ahead online.
